Wednesday, January 04, 2006

Size = God's blessing???

Most pastors are being taught that if your church is huge, then God is behind it and for it. I doubt that population is a good gauge for health. Consider the amazing photo essay from Slate called "The Megachurch Age." The photos are breathtaking but look at #5 - it's the Mormon Conference Center in Salt Lake City. Twenty-one thousand show up - are you willing to say that the God of the Bible is behind this?

1 comment:

A million Muslims can be found in Mecca. One could scrape together a sizeable gathering of UFO conspiracy theorists in Roswell. Jesus had a large number of followers looking for a free meal when He told them they needed to eat His flesh. This effectively thinned the crowd down to those who were truly looking to be fed with truth.

There are large churches filled with faithful people. There are also large churches who are filled with spiritual infants, or worse: the spiritually dead. Even in the church in Ephesus, according to John's transcription of Christ's message to them early in his Revelation of Jesus Christ, they had good works, but had lost their first love.

So what evidence is conclusive? Neither large crowds nor good works are conclusive evidence of God's hand. Even faith in God, which is forged and discernable only in the face of conflict and opposition, can be imitated by those who trust in false gods.

But a combination of these evidences with a deliberate foundation on the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (as revealed in the scriptures marked by God's own hand as the accurate account of the fulfillment of His promise) is the sign of a church blessed by God.